“Dress!”

Bearing a bundle of scrupulously folded rubious cloth, he glides from the nook with the grace of noiseless snowfall. A mere murmur of threads as he rests the red, pleated burden upon the foot of her pallet.

She watches him wordlessly - her secreted thoughts a roil of unquiet imaginings - without expression. 

Still as living sculpture, her bareness wrapped in a patchy, woolen blanket.

“The Weaver’s work left little more than ashy ribbons. I am hoping this will be to your suiting and comfort.” 

His thin, sharp mouth drawn into a kindly crinkle. Eyes gleaming like cracked opals, very nearly vanishing into almond shaped folds of albino skin.

“Little else outlived the singing fires, ah. But for this…”

He charily raises a slim, oddly-worked blade of wavy, stratified metal-craft. Its dull, sinuous ripples unevenly drink in the cool, silvery radiance of the room. 

A disquieting sensation of unceasing thirst follows the predatory instrument, as he briefly paints a meandering pattern, almost playfully, through the air with its terrible edge.  

Her mien, as yet a mask placid and unplumbable, displays a brief agitation in the thinning of her lips and a scarcely detectable tremor in the corner of her eye, as she leans away from his idle blade-play.

“Innulian steel. Ah and so, so very old…”

Apprehending her discontent, his sporting ceases.

Moving quickly then, to lay the instrument reverently upon the incarnadine bundle of folds at her blanket-concealed toes, and stepping away in a manner measured and deliberate.

“A gift of immeasurable worth. Now! Dress and walk with me awhile.”

In the imperceptible fluttering of an eye he is gone from the chamber. Like a shred of unraveling smoke, leaving her alone in the cold illumination of moonfall.

She swiftly slips the slim blade beneath the concealing blanket, feeling something akin to contentment towards its edged and acicular presence.

She then studies the wrapped bundle briefly, before unfolding it like the long petals of a smooth ruby-painted flower.

No’om Spider-Weave. 

The ivory trimmed, sensuously cardinal-coloured spider silk shift and reciprocal robe, flows through her fingers with the density of supple cream and the strength of iron-wire.

A Weaver’s Robe…

Worth more in silver than a Minor manor house.

An ephemeral thought rises above her stormy conscience.

Might I learn the Weaver’s songs?

An answering whisper from out the horizonless landscapes of her innermost heart.

Of fire, no…

But of blood and heat. 

Of tomb and bone.

Ere long, she stands silently marvelling, before the room’s high, tapered looking-glass. 

A wraith woven from ribbons of blood and milk. 

She peers into eyes all her own and yet other, as though through a cunning mask. Inwardly alight with a cold, depthless fire, under which she can feel her very human spirit shrink, shrink and fracture. 

Monstrous…

Sweet to hand, sweet to touch…

We are monstrous…

Her disquieting reflections are once again abbreviated by his sudden presence.

His too angular smile, softly unnerving for all its kind affability.

“I think it, becoming. I keep little cloth that is proper for a young lady, however-”

What is your name?

“Oh, I was known once as Lesshin. But I have long loved another given to me: Nimblethorne.”

Nimblethorne.

My mother named me Pyna…